World Class Company: Consumer Products Inc.
Hires a Consultant
Having adopted a new growth strategy, Consumer Prod-
ucts Inc. (CPI), an international manufacturer of foods,
home care, and personal care products, set out to develop
an innovative, enterprise culture. 1 13 (CPI is a pseudonym
for an actual company.) The company decided that by
changing the style of its leaders in several major busi-
ness groups, it could make company-wide changes such
as the following:
f:!i Moving from endless debate to developing candid
discussions and the energy to move quickly
II Moving from a lack of accountability to having peo-
ple take ownership for their commitments
II Moving from slow and cautious decision making to
more risk taking
II Moving-from exhausting bureaucratic processes to
energized and innovative action instigated from
lower levels in the company
II Moving from having a lot of unnecessary work to
empowering employees to refuse work that is not
clearly aligned with the company's strategic pri-
orities
The company hired the consulting firm The Forum
Corporation (a re.al company) to train its managers in
the skills associated with the types of leaders who can
grow a business. These skills included different skills
for different organizational levels. For example, a high-
level leader might learn how to inspire and motivate,
a.nd how to obtain valid information on the competition
and market. Leaders lower in the hierarchy would learn
how to target and motivate innovation, how to listen,
and how to receive feedback. Over a three-month
period, at each management level-vice-presidents,
directors, managers, and individual contributors-
Forum consultants coached individuals and gave them
feedback about their emerging leadership behaviors. A
key aspect of the program was that the training and
learning occurred on the job and on site rather than off
the job and off site. Each individual was required to set
challenging business and personal leadership goals to
execute in the course of day-to-day business. At the end
of the program, individuals met to share stories and
lessons learned.
What did the company accomplish through training its
leaders to adopt new behaviors? Here are some examples:
lIil A supervisor dramatically changed his style and
made himself more accessible to his employees.
Because of this, two factory workers collaborated to
make a process improvement that saved the com-
pany $125,000.
III A vice-president adopted a new cross-functional
team approach to customer relations and made a
significant breakthrough.
III One team leader cited his team's increased passion
and risk-taking.
II A vice-president noted, "In the end it's okay to
enlist the support of others, it's okay not to have all
the answers, and it's okay to share that vulnerability
with others. It helps bring you closer together."
Discuss
1. How have CPI's leaders adapted their approaches
to the company's new strategic focus? (See work
unit leadership theory in this chapter.)
2. How have CPI's leaders guided their followers to
valued goals? (See path-goal theory in this chapter.)
3. How have CPI's leaders changed the supervisor-subor-
dinate relationship? (See leader-member exchange the-
ory in this chapter.)
4. In situations where a company is moving from a
more bureaucratic to a more enterprising design,
what factors in the company's culture might encour-
age its leaders to return to their old ways?